[time-nuts] US ebay sellers who won't ship outside the US

Lux, James P (337C) james.p.lux at jpl.nasa.gov
Fri Jul 17 04:54:59 UTC 2009


The issue of returning equipment for repair is a significant concern. Unless
you have the appropriate licenses both ways.. Company A in Germany, say,
ships a widget to company B in the US, all nicely approved by whoever in
Germany (maybe they didn't even need a license).  Widget breaks and Company
B wants to return it to Company A for warranty repair.  Oops, you need an
export license to send widgets.

Worse yet, because of "deemed export" rules with respect to technical data,
you probably can't even tell Company A what went wrong with your widget
without a license. And it might take two separate licenses: one to transfer
the widget back; and a different one to transfer the information.

A similar situation arises where you are getting technical support from a
foreign vendor.  You have to be careful about how you ask the questions. And
sending them a copy of your schematic or test data might be "streng
verboten".


This whole thing is so twisted and convoluted, you can see why some sellers
just run in fear.  If they've had the fear of the law put into them at some
point, they just figure: the safest way is to do nothing.

On 7/16/09 8:47 PM, "John May" <jmay at impulse.adsl24.co.uk> wrote:

> But it makes you glad you're an engineer rather than a pointy haired
> bureaucrat!
> 
> That incident reads like a Dilbert comic strip.
> 
> Pete Lancashire wrote:
>> When I was at Tek in the 80's I received some assembles from a
>> company in China to check out for component issues. I was denied
>> 




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